small towns

Boats? Dad had yachts of them

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‘And not all of them were in the water’

Okay, okay. I’ll apologize for the terrible “yachts” pun. Sorta. I did win a contest with it, though, back in the Olden Days.

See, New York Magazine used to run a contest in every issue that involved wordplay, something I enjoy very much indeed, as evidenced these days with my compulsive playing of both Spelling Bee (every morning with coffee) and Wordle (every cocktail hour with, well, a cocktail).

Mom shucking corn. Which has nothing to do with this story. Except that I always enjoy a cocktail as part of my perfect corn cooking method (here you go)

This particular contest was to come up with funny definitions for words beginning with “y.” My winner? Yachts: many many boats. (Which is also a title of one of my pieces you can check out after this one, if you’re not too tired of being amused.)

Enough about me and my love of word games. Let’s talk about my Dad and his love of boats. I’ve written about his famous houseboat, the Sir-Launch-A-Lot. (He, ahem, loved puns too.) Today I’m going to talk about his landlubbing boats — his cars.

I’ve used this photo before, but I can’t resist. It shows Dad (courtesy of Scott, the camera’s owner) operating a remote shutter to take an early selfie.

See, Dad didn’t like just any ole cars — he liked really big cars. Cars so big that they were like boats. He favored Chrysler New Yorkers and Lincoln Town Cars — cars so big and boatlike they were like piloting the Queen Mary. I swear you’d turn the wheel on one of those babies and it would take several seconds for the car to actually turn.

And how was the ride? If you were seated in one of these, you not only couldn’t hear any outside noise, you couldn’t feel anything on the outside either. No bumps, no potholes, no speed bumps — even those wakey-uppy grids they put before you come to a big intersection just felt like you rolled over some sandpaper.

Here’s a car we actually owned. (It was a Ford; I remember going to the showroom.) That’s me in the back having a tantrum and refusing to participate in the Peterson family photo

Speaking of Town Cars, once Dad and Mom were visiting me in New York and Dad noticed many big black cars tooling around.  “Look! New Yorkers love a nice big Town Car too!” Little did he realize that these Town Cars belonged to car services, not to Actual New Yorkers.

To be fair, Dad didn’t actually own his Town Cars. (Nor his Chrysler New Yorkers). He leased them as part of his business. Of course I never paid any attention to this — until I was a freshman in college and Dad told me he’d get me a car if I got straight A’s. I did, and he did. I got a cute little Chevy Vega. Bright blue. But, after a year I had to give it back. No, my grades didn’t plummet. I didn’t realize Dad had leased it. (My Oldest Younger Brother Scott was a wiser bargainer; when he got his straight A’s from Northwestern, he made Dad buy his Datsun. It was orange, I think. But it was his, I know.)

“My” Chevy Vega, getting accessorized with cans and such on the occasion of my first wedding. (Yes, I was married before the Days of the Dude. Read about it here.)

So, how big were Dad’s boats. Er, cars? They were so big that Dad hung a tennis ball (at least I think it was a tennis ball; it might have been a golf ball) from the ceiling of the garage, placed so that it bonked gently on the windshield when the boat (er, car) was pulled in enough to close the garage door without crunching any fenders.

Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of the inside of the ball-bedecked garage. But here’s what was outside: a nice comfy swing

They were also so big that once we lost a child in one. True story. A big ole batch of Henrys was visiting — maybe for Dad’s retirement party. At any rate, it was back when we sibs all had little kids in tow. We were rounding everyone up and someone had told my nephew Leo to go get in Grampa’s car, then neglected to see him sitting in the back seat. Everyone left (in other cars, no one wanting to drive the boat), and it was hours before anyone remembered about Leo. Yup. He was still in the back seat, waiting. Gosh. Maybe he’s still there. I know I haven’t seen him in a while.

This time it’s Doug having a tantrum. And who could blame him? Yikes. At least we weren’t in old-timey costumes

Amagansett, New York. August 2023

 

 

Missing Mr. M

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‘The end of the end of an era’

Let me start by saying how pleasantly surprised I was, upon googling my late dad’s engineering firm, HMG, to find that it not only still exists, but appears to be thriving — with four, count ’em four offices instead of just the one they started when I was a kid. The home office, however, appears to have relocated from Carlyle Lake Road to somewhere in Breese, which is kind of like the Dodgers absconding from Brooklyn to LA.

Youngest Younger Brother Doug playing cards on the Sir Launch-A-Lot with The Dude. Note HMG-monogrammed promotional beer cozies

“HMG” stands for Henry, Meisenheimer & Gende, the names of the three young gumption-filled engineers who founded this firm back in 1966. Of these, “M” was Last Man Standing. Until earlier this week.

Learning of Mr. Meisenheimer’s demise (I could never bring myself to call him “Hal” or even “Harold”) sent me careening down Memory Lane. Of course, to be fair, just catching a glimpse of, say, a handprint ashtray has the power to do so these days.

(Incidentally, I did start calling Mrs. Meisenheimer by her first name. It was the year I turned 65, and Mrs. M, er “Ruth” convinced me that it was about time.)

That’s Mrs. M (er, “Ruth”) sitting with my Mom and Sister at Mom’s 90th birthday party

See, not only did my dad (the “H” in HMG) work with Mr. M, I babysat for their kids. Which amps the grownups-deserve-your-respect level up another notch, or maybe even two. I babysat for a lot of people back then; I racked up a lot of experience doing this, and not just experience watching kids. See “Alice’s Adventures in Babysitting.”

Babysitting at the Meisenheimers’ was my favorite gig. I can’t remember these kids fighting, much less peeing on each other. And they always gave me a goodnight hug. (Sometimes even a kiss.) Also, the Meisenheimers had this beautiful house that felt so warm and comfortable to sit around in after the kids had gone to bed. It was only years later that I realized this was because the Meisenheimers had lovingly restored it and furnished it with antiques — kind of rare for that split-level rumpus-room era. They even had shelves and shelves of books — books that they let me read. I’m pretty sure it was there that I discovered Sherlock Holmes.

Me with fellow graduation marshal Stanley. We were high-school juniors at the time. I was a babysitter; as far as I know, Stanley was not

But back to Mr. H. The photo at the top of this post was taken about the time the firm was founded, and shows him pretty much the way I remember him. I say “pretty much” because it is missing one very important detail: his pipe. I can honestly say that I never saw Mr. M without one clenched firmly between his teeth. He didn’t even remove it to speak. He would just kind of position it in the corner of his mouth and talk around it. Since my dad did the same thing, only with a cigarette, it made for some muffled exchanges. In fact, we Henry Kids called the way they talked to each other “Engineering Speak,” and used to imitate it ourselves. “Hey Harold,” our dad would go, “can you (mumble mumble) me the (mumble mumble) plans?” “Sure!” goes Harold, “Let me just finish the (mumble mumble) first.” This method of conversing was made even more hilarious once HMG built their new office and they communicated over an intercom.

Dad and The Child regaling the crowd at his HMG retirement party

Anyway. The photo of Mr. M in his obituary doesn’t have his pipe. But he looks remarkably like he does in the photo on the HMG website — and in my memory.

RIP, Mr. Meisenheimer. If the angels can’t understand your mumbling, my dad certainly can. Assuming he’s up there with you.

Amagansett, New York. July 2023

 

 

 

Social media, Sixties-style

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‘My Mom and Magazine Club’

A couple of weeks ago I told you about how my Dad loved to go out on his houseboat, the Sir Launch-A-Lot. He’d fill ‘er up with clients and/or family members and tool around Carlyle Lake for hours, regaling one and sundry with jokes and stories.

My Dad was pretty entertaining on land, too. Here he demonstrates his favorite trick

Mom liked the houseboat, too, but her favorite thing was to go up on the roof with a nice big stack of women’s magazines — Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Family Circle. and the like. There were seven of these magazines that were extremely popular back in the Sixties — they were actually referred to as “The Seven Sisters” — and my mom took several. She liked company while she did this, and I was happy to oblige. We’d work our way through the stack making small talk — jumping in the Lake every once in a while to cool off.

Favorite Sister Laura and me up top of the Sir LAL, demonstrating an early selfie, courtesy Oldest Younger Bro Scott

While paging through the issues, we’d make (mostly snarky) comments on the fashions and the celebrities — no Kardashians, but plenty of Kennedys — and the ads. This was back when they ran those ads that showed some gorgeous woman in a bra with a headline that said, “I dreamed I painted the town red in my Maidenform Bra.” And there was a feminine hygiene ad that showed a box with just one copy line: “Modess: because.” I used to wonder, “because why?” We’d even make comments on the magazine covers, which always seemed to feature both an outrageous dessert — “Scoop Up Double Chocolate Brownie Sundae!” — and a fad diet — “Get Ready for Swimsuit Season in One Week!”

I don’t have a lot of photos of the inside of the house in summer — it was so darned hot, we spent most of our time outside

There were also cool regular features in these magazines that were fun to read bits of aloud. One of our faves was “Can This Marriage Be Saved” from the Ladies Home Journal. We also liked to scope out interesting recipes — leafing though women’s magazines was how we discovered Jello Cake, which is one of the most delightful creations ever. I was going to say “dessert” creations, but in our family, Jello Cake never made it to dessert. It got eaten as soon as it “set.” One Jello Cake that was destined for dessert (to grace a client houseboat outing) was found marred with a big bare footprint right in the middle. It got eaten anyway. (Jello Cake is that good.)

Mom on the porch with Grandkids Leo and The Child. Look closely at the coffee table and you’ll see a big ole stack of magazines

Mom and I could go for hours paging and commenting, paging and commenting. It was Sixties Social Media, you see. We were being social while engaged with media. And we were hooked on it well before the internet was a gleam in some nerd’s eye.

As entertaining as those houseboat social media sessions were, Mom’s Magazine Club took the whole thing up a notch. She and her friends would meet once a month and trade magazines and stories while eating a nice lunch. (Serving a nice lunch meant a chance to try out some of the recipes they found in those magazines. They’d also serve lots of coffee. I couldn’t find a shot of my mother actually present at Magazine Club, but the shot at the top of this post does show her wielding a coffee pot.)

The closest I can get to a picture of Mom at Magazine Club. I bet she wore outfits kind of like the one in this family portrait

Mom and her friends would take turns being the hostess and also giving talks about articles they’d read in the magazines. Mom told me she remembered giving a particularly well-received presentation on evolution inspired by a magazine article. I’m betting it wasn’t from Ladies Home Journal.

Oh — before I go, a little announcement. The blog and I will be on vacation until the end of July. Here’s hoping you find plenty of social media (preferably the in-person kind) to keep you occupied till Lutheran Liar Looks at Life returns.

New York City. July 2022

 

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

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‘I wonder what little Harry Houdini’s answer was.’

Way back when the earth’s crust was cooling and I was a youngster, there was a show on local TV called “Texas Bruce.”

The full name was “The Wranglers’ Club with Texas Bruce.” Texas Bruce showed cartoons and did silly jokes and suchlike, and had a whole peanut gallery of kids (The Wranglers) on hand. I remember that his sign-off was “Hasta la vista, mis caballeros,” a phrase whose meaning, of course, was a mystery to us Clinton County kids. We gathered it was something like “good-bye,” since Texas Bruce would be waving while he said it.

Anyway. One of his “bits” every show was to ask the boys and girls in his studio audience what they wanted to be when they grew up.

So glad Dude Man did not grow up to be a snake charmer. Tho he is a charmer

The TV station was in St. Louis, which was then — and still is — a very Catholic town. How Catholic? Well, when “Hair” played St. Louis, they had to cut the nude scene.

So. Texas Bruce would be going down the rows of Cub Scout-outfitted boys and Brownie-dressed girls asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” To which they’d answer, “A nun.” “A priest.” “A nun. “A priest.” “A priest.” “A nun.” Honestly, I’d say at least 70% of every audience answered “priest” or “nun.” Which led one to worry about population trends for the greater metropolitan St. Louis area.

What does this have to do with Harry Houdini? Well. I used to work on the Kimberly-Clark account at Ogilvy. In fact, I’ve written about this before in a rather amusing piece titled “Hoohah Time is Story Time.” In that story I mention, among other things, that on client trips to Appleton, Wisconsin (KC’s headquarters), we Ogilvyites would stay at the Paper Valley Hotel. (There was no valley anywhere near, but they did make paper there.)

Speaking of Kimberly-Clark, Huggies had a campaign with babies acting out future careers. Here’s The Child as a magician. Which she sort of is

The Paper Valley was one of those hotels where they put little paper tent thingies everywhere: one to tell you to reuse your towels, one with the TV channels on it, one to tell you not to smoke, and so on. (I guess, being a paper-making town, the hotel got a deal on these.) And there was one with famous Appletonians. No kidding. There are famous people from Appleton. Edna Ferber. Willem Defoe (really!). And my fave, Harry Houdini.

Houdini was such an Appletonian that he claimed to have been born in Appleton when he was really born in Hungary. Appleton Street was renamed in his honor, and there was a Houdini Historic Center I’ve been to because Ogilvy hosted one of their Christmas parties there for the Kimberly-Clark clients. (Since then they’ve changed the museum name, maybe because they’ve added some exhibits on Senator Joe McCarthy. Who was also an Appleton boy.)

God forbid you should ask little Teddy what he wanted to be when he grew up. Other than a U of Washington Husky, that is

Side note: I always wondered why we hosted the KC Christmas parties in Appleton instead of New York City. Maybe the clients didn’t like to travel? Or maybe they just didn’t like to travel to New York. I distinctly remember one rare occasion when a KC client came to New York for a meeting and asked if we could have “breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

But back to those Paper Valley business trips. I would sometimes gaze at the Harry Houdini paper tent thingie and muse about what would happen if Texas Bruce asked little Harry, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Would he answer, “I’d like to be bound with chains and dropped to the bottom of a river”?

Grown-up Harry realizes his childhood dream

I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t say “a priest.” But that’s probably because his father was a rabbi.

New York City. May 2022

 

My polio-shot marriage

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‘Mommy has something she sort of forgot to tell you’

(This story was originally published in honor of my would-have-been 43rd anniversary in August of 2015. Since many of you haven’t had a chance to read it — but mainly because I’m out in the Pacific Northwest enjoying the company of my mother, daughter and my sister’s family — I’m posting it again. Think of it as a summer rerun, Lutheran Liar style. Enjoy!)

Last week I told you about how once I dated Steve Martin. Now I’m going to tell you about how once I married a guy — a guy who was not The Dude.

The Guy in question is the one pictured in the rather awkward wedding photo at the top of this post. I doubt very much that he reads my blog, but, for all intents and purposes and in this story, he’ll just be ‘The Guy’. (That rather downcast-looking young girl — the one who’s not me — is my sister Laura, she of ‘Larry and the Nose Holes’ fame.)

Why am I telling this story now? Well, tomorrow would have been my, like, zillionth wedding anniversary if indeed I had stayed married to The Guy. The other is that it’s August. Which is like Blog Siberia, except that it’s so hot. So if I embarrass anyone, including myself, the collateral damage will be relatively minor.

I was married so briefly to The Guy, and had been married for such a long time to The Dude, that I sort of forgot all about my ‘previous marriage’. Until one August about 15 years ago when The Child was getting ready for her annual visit to her grandparents in Carlyle, my home town. Continue reading

If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the hardware store

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‘Shopping local means lots of local color’

It’s been really hot here in Amagansett, though not as hot as it was the last time my Middle Younger Brother Roger was here.

That time it was so hot that you couldn’t walk on the sand without burning your feet. My poor wilted sister in law, the amazing Nobody-Doesn’t-Like-Jenn, was loath to leave the library, the one air-conditioned room in the house. (The AC is for the books, you see. To keep them from molding. People, at least most of them, don’t mold. So the rest of the house doesn’t need it.)

Before Roger and Jenn melted down into viscous puddles like the Wicked Witch of the West, they did manage an outing. Roger: “Where can I get an Amagansett hat?” Me: “Herb has Amagansett hats. Go see Herb. At the hardware store. Herb’ll fix you up.” (Now, I don’t have a photo of Herb’s hardware store — inside or out — but the shot at the top of this story shows The Child and me standing out front a few years ago.)

Everyone knows you can’t wear your Amagansett hat in Amagansett. Here Dude Man is seen wearing his on a plane to Borneo

Now, my Brother Roger is the kind of guy you could drop into the middle of the Sahara Desert and he’d make ten new friends in the first ten minutes. And Herb? Well, suffice it to say that Herb is a Local Character who defies easy description.

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“When I grow up, I want to be Brenda Starr”

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‘Me and the mimeograph machine, making news after school’

Somebody Up There must not want me to go to The City. Last week when I journeyed there for a necessary errand, an epic storm struck right when I had to catch the Jitney home. In spite of being (what I thought was) adequately prepared, I — and everything I had with me — got thoroughly soaked. (I tried to make a video of myself pouring literally cups of water out of my rain shoes — yes, “rain shoes”, I told you I was prepared — but it was too dark and wet down by my feet.)

The errand that took me into The City: watching the countertop guys make a template for this curved counter in our itty bitty kitchen

Here’s how the side with no curve turned out

As you know only too well by now, The Dude and I are downsizing and need to get everything out of the old apartment. So, every time I slip into The City I try to bring some stuff back with me. If I’m traveling by Jitney (which is a fancy New York name for what is essentially a bus) I can’t take, say, boxes of books, but every little bit counts.

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Small place, big personalities

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‘The Colorful Characters of Clinton County’

I was watching a clip of Donald Trump slip-sliding his way down that ramp at West Point and immediately thought of Dennis Rose. “Gription,” Dennis would have said. “Trump’s shoes ain’t got enough gription.”

Well, if “gription” isn’t a word, it oughta be. Dennis used it to describe what was wrong with his own sneakers during a basketball practice one afternoon long ago in the Carlyle High School gym. (I didn’t witness this word coinage myself, those being pre-Title IX days, when the sportiest we girls could get was playing dodge-ball in that same high school gym. While wearing bloomers. Honest. Bloomers.)

Dennis’ locution was colorful, but, trust me, there were other Clinton County denizens who made him seem pasty-pale in comparison.

There was the guy named Bill who rode his bike everywhere. Sure, no one bats an eye at an adult on a bike now (even sealed in Spandex), but back then a grownup riding a bike caused, well, comment. Indeed, we kids were told to “stay away from that man.”

Kids riding bikes was another kettle of handlebars entirely. We went everywhere on bikes. Well, except not to school. Bike riding to school–even on a swell banana bike like Rog’s–was considered very uncool and just was not done

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Who wants to go on a Walmart Run?

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‘No, my hometown didn’t have a Costco’

When I was growing up Midcentury-Modern Style in the Midwest, my very small home town had a main street with a few stores (and several taverns) on it.

If you wanted to, say, buy a Christmas present for your mom (Evening in Paris was a popular choice), you’d take your allowance or your paper route money and go to the Dime Store. (Ours was a Ben Franklin, but we always called it the “Dime Store”.) Which was owned by a really crabby guy who totally didn’t like kids and would follow you around like you were going to shoplift. There really wasn’t any other option.

Then, sometime after I’d gone off to college, a Walmart came to town. It was out on the west end by the Dairy King (totally different from the Dairy Queen). A (gasp) Walmart.

My Personal Family. In the front yard of the house I grew up in — in my Walmart-welcoming home town

Did my town protest? Did they try to keep that Walmart out? No way. They welcomed it, big-time. I remember reading a Big Story about its Grand Opening in the local paper (which I subscribed to because I worked there during the summers.) And it was only a matter of time — and not much time, either — before everyone was shopping at this new Walmart.

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Strolling The Prom

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‘Yet another trip down my personal Memory Highway’

It might be only a tad wider than a sidewalk, and just over a mile long, but The Seaside Promenade — lovingly dubbed ‘The Prom’ — is jammed with traffic. Memory traffic; for me, that is.

As you Faithful Readers know all too well by now, I was raised, Midcentury-Modern-style, in a small town in the Midwest. It was a nice enough small town, but as it happened, all five of us Henry Kids scattered to the four corners of the country pretty much as soon as we could get our respective acts together.

The small-towny, rather Carlyle-esque house where my parents lived in Seaside

And, a decade or so after the last of their brood flew the coop, our parents too pulled up stakes (I’m dizzy from mixing metaphors here) and relocated to Seaside, Oregon, an unassuming small coastal town that one of my beloved-and-hilarious Younger Brothers immediately christened “Carlyle-by-the-Sea”.

We had an Old Crab or two in Carlyle, too

Similarities? Lutheran Church with coffee hour: check. Library where they forgive an overdue book (or two or five): check. Neighbors who don’t mind if you “drop in”: double check. Plenty of local character(s), too. Carlyle had Skinny Man and Skinny Lady and That Guy Who Rode His Bike Everywhere (when I was a kid, a bike-riding Grownup was definitely considered a “character”); Seaside had Bubble Man. This was a guy who rode a bike-like contraption that spit out bubbles. I never actually saw him, but my brothers swear that he existed.

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